I have a SATA 250gig Western Digital hard drive. I ran it on my computer in the fall. Then, in January, I needed to reinstall Windows XP Home 5.1 w/ SP2. I was using it as a backup to the C drive.

A couple days ago, I hooked the 250 gig WD hard drive up again as a slave drive. But found the Windows XP won't recognize the hard drive.

When I start up the computer and go into the setup function >> boot, it lists both the c drive and the WD 250 gig drive.
But, when I load XP Windows and go into MyComputer, it doesn't recognize that the drive exists.

Things I've tried:

* I've used all the suggested jumper settings. (And even tried others.)

* I've gone into Disk Management as well, and the drive is not listed there either, so there is no way to assign a letter to the drive.

* I've also tried MasterBoot.exe, and it doesn't help.

* I've run off a floppy boot disk and then used the Western Digital disk to reformat the hard drive. Still nothing.

I'm sure there's a simple setting or solution, but am have reached the end of my ideas.
I haven't tried putting in new Bios. But it doesn't seem like that would be it, as the hard drive worked previously with this bios.

Any suggestions??

thefranks5

Hi thefranks5 & welcome to Geeks2Go! You haven't mentioned installing the sata device drivers.

Sata drives need third-party sata device drivers because XP doesn't support them natively (not even XP-SP2). This applies not only to sata drives on which the OS is going to be installed, but also to secondary drives. And calling it a "slave" drive is incorrect, since there's no such thing where sata drives are concerned.
Sata device drivers are usually supplied with the motherboard at time of purchase or with the PC.

This post has been edited by pip22: Mar 1 2008, 05:21 PM